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I’m sorry, but I personally feel that many hosting providers are just plain ole disgusting! Actually, on a point of clarification, there have really only been two hosting providers I’ve used for all of my sites over the years.
One of them has been SiteGround — a hosting company I once compared to “one of those hidden gem clothing stores in the bac of the mega malls that’s both affordable and branded with top-notch with customer service.”
But hey, is that still true? Is SiteGround still worth recommending?
These are the questions we aim to answer in our SiteGround review post.
Quick Navigation
What is SiteGround?
Company Background & Overview
SiteGround (affiliate link) hit the scene in 2004 after a group of Bulgarian schoolmates recognized the need for an easier, faster, and safer web hosting provider.
Since then, SiteGround has exploded with over 600+ employees, 4 office locations, and now hosts over 2 million domains worldwide.
Surprisingly, SiteGround is still privately owned, a rare quality in today’s corporate-cluttered web hosting market. As far as services go, SiteGround runs the gamut, offering:
- Shared hosting plans
- Cloud hosting plans
- WordPress hosting plans
- WooCommerce hosting plans
And tons of other services, widgets, and tools we’ll cover throughout this SiteGround hosting review. Yet, if you want to find out more about what SiteGround does in the general sense, you can take a look at their Blog, Help page, or their About page.
But perhaps you might still be wondering: “What is SiteGround? and what does it do?”
Benefits of SiteGround
Excellent Reputation
Any time you do a poll in Facebook marketing groups or online marketing forums and ask the marketers there what hosting service they prefer, it’s amazing to see how SiteGround always seems to come out tops. It’s extremely popular amongst online marketers – and they swear by it.
Reasonable Affordability
While it’s not the cheapest web hosting service on the market, it is highly affordable. For the value they provide, SiteGround is definitely underpriced. Most beginners on a tight budget will be able to afford SiteGround’s hosting plans.
99.99% Guaranteed Uptime
SiteGround has a 99.99% uptime – which basically means their servers hardly go down. This is crucial, especially if you’re running an eCommerce store. If your site goes down, you’ll lose sales. That will rarely happen with SiteGround.
User-Friendly Interface
You’ll have no problems using SiteGround’s interface to manage your sites. It’s intuitive and everything is neat and well laid out.
Free SSL Certificates with All Accounts
With Google blatantly pointing out security issues when a site doesn’t have SSL, it’s crucial that your sites have a secure socket layer technology-enabled. Since it’s free with SiteGround, you’ll not have to pay for it. Wonderful!
Migration Service Available
If you’re currently with another web host and wish to switch to SiteGround, you can contact SiteGround’s support and they’ll migrate your sites for you. There may be a fee involved… but it’ll be done for you quickly and easily. No tech headaches here for you.
Daily & On-Demand Website Backups
SiteGround will automatically backup your site/s daily. In the very rare event that your site gets hacked or you lose your data, etc. you’ll always be able to restore your site with the backups stored on SiteGround’s servers.
Unlimited Email Addresses
If you have virtual assistants and staff who need their own email addresses, you can create unlimited email addresses with SiteGround.
Free Cloudflare CDN
CDN refers to copies of your web pages which are stored in many different servers across multiple locations. This will translate to faster page load times because your pages will be ‘pulled out’ from a location that’s closest to where the visitor is surfing from. This is a fantastic feature in SiteGround, and it’s free!
Money-Back Guarantee
You have 30 days to test SiteGround. If you’re not satisfied, you can always ask for a refund. This is highly unlikely because once you see how good they are, you’ll probably stick with them for years.
WordPress Staging
You’ll easily be able to create a WordPress staging site within SiteGround and test out your theme, plugins, etc. When it all looks good and functions smoothly, you can make your site live. SiteGround makes this highly technical process very smooth and easy for just about anyone to do.
Superb 24/7 Customer Support
SiteGround’s support is awesome. In 2020, SiteGround had a customer satisfaction rate of 97.7% – and won 2 Stevie Awards for customer service in the process.
SiteGround provides an enormous selection of tips and guides in their Knowledge Resources and Tutorials sections. These guides are built with the newbie in mind, giving step-by-step instructions with clear screenshots to guide you along.
There’s no guesswork with these guides. But with 24/7 support round the clock, you’ll be able to chat with someone on their support desk at any time. If you have any issues with your website or hosting, you can easily contact them.
Resourceful Blog Posts
The up-to-date blog posts available on the dashboard are definitely a homerun customer success feature too. They’re not sourced with thin content either. These articles deliver everything from helpful SEO guides to in-depth updates about the new and exciting goodies SiteGround has been serving up.
Drawbacks of SiteGround
No hosting service provider is perfect and SiteGround has its cons too.
Fixed Storage Space
You only get 10 GB of web space and you’re limited to 10,000 visitors on the StartUp plan. If your site gets more visitors and requires more webspace, you’ll have to upgrade to the GoBig or GoGeek plans.
SiteGround offers super-fast SSD storage, but that space is limited based on your hosting plan:
- StartUp Plan: 10GB of space
- GrowBig Plan: 20GB of space
- GoGeek Plan: 40GB of space
Pricey Month-to-Month Billing
There’s also the issue of a higher renewal price. This seems to be a bugbear for many SiteGround customers, especially when they have to pay more once the introductory pricing ends. Sure, SiteGround’s annual pricing is comparable to other web hosting providers. However, if you opt for the month-to-month billing cycle, the prices take a hefty jump – about 3 times as much.
So, you’ll want to check with their support what the new pricing will be when it’s time to renew – and then you can make a better decision.
SiteGround also does not offer dedicated hosting. If you wish to get dedicated servers, you’ll need to migrate your site to a web host that has this service.
Shared Hosting Plans: Pricing
Each of SiteGround’s 3 shared hosting plans (listed above) has 3 pricing tiers:
- StartUp
- GrowBig
- GoGeek
Let’s dive deeper to analyse them:
StartUp
Pricing: $14.99/month or $4.99/month when billed annually
Ideal for low-traffic websites with 10,000 monthly visitors or less.
StartUp includes:
- 10 GB of space
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free WordPress installation
- Free WordPress migrator
- Automatic WordPress Updates
- Let’s Encrypt SSL
- Cloudflare CDN
- Free email
- SiteGround’s SuperCacher tool
- Unlimited databases
- 30-day money-back guarantee
GrowBig
Pricing: $24.99/month or $7.99/month when billed annually.
GrowBig is recommended for low-traffic websites with around 25,000 monthly visitors or less.
GrowBig includes everything from the StartUp plan plus:
- On-demand backups
- Ultrafast PHP
- WordPress staging
- Collaborator login
GoGeek
Pricing: $39.99/month or $14.99/month when billed annually.
Recommended for websites with around 100,000 monthly visitors or less.
GrowBig includes everything from the StartUp and GrowBig plans plus:
- White-label access
- More server resources
- Priority customer support
Is SiteGround Right for You?
If you’re a blogger or an online marketer who is starting out and needs reliable web hosting, SiteGround is perfect for you. It’s affordable and has all the features a good web host should have.
While it doesn’t have dedicated hosting, it’ll probably take you a while to reach a level where you can afford dedicated hosting and then you can move. Don’t pay more than necessary when you’re just starting out.
So, if you’re looking for a web host with the right fusion of power, simplicity, and a pinch of creative magic, SiteGround is worthy of taking it for a spin. In my opinion, SiteGround is arguably one of the best web hosting providers on the planet. Give it a try and you’ll be glad you did.
>>> Click Here To Get SiteGround Hosting <<<
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